In my past life, I was a vampire

March in Texas—and already the wind carried the dry, feverish breath of new grass and red earth. Linda set down the last cardboard box of old books from the bed of her pickup, a fine sheen of sweat beading across her forehead. She straightened up and looked at the wooden sign above the door, a sign she had nailed up herself and painted with three coats of clear varnish—Linda’s Flower House. She had carved those words herself, stroke by stroke, with a small knife, and the faint scent of fresh-cut wood still clung to their edges. She let out one long, slow breath, as though she meant to expel from her lungs the stale air she had been hoarding for eight whole years. Eight years earlier, dragging a half-worn suitcase, she had set out from this same little town. Old Mr. Mac, the town postman, stood on the platform waving to her and shouting something that the train’s whistle swallowed whole. She had been twenty-one then, fresh out of college, her head full of taller towers, brighter shop windows, and louder titles. The place waiting for her lay hundreds of miles away—a city of office blocks whose lights never went out, of overpasses still streaming with traffic at two in the morning, of the fast, breathless urban life she had once believed she would spend her whole life wanting. But in the end the city’s pace was too quick for her. For years she worked as a copywriter at an advertising agency, tapping away at a flickering screen deep into the night, while in the subway people pressed against one another like a shoal of fish and never once looked into each other’s eyes. She had kept a pothos on her windowsill once, but that faint green thing had wilted in the haze and the dry wind of the air conditioner, until only a single withered vine was left. One winter night, after working past midnight, she switched off her computer and saw in the window glass a stranger’s face—unfamiliar and exhausted. Suddenly she remembered the days of running wild over the hills behind her childhood home: the cornflowers, the blue-eyed grass, and the wild daisies covering the slopes, and her grandmother setting an old tin pail full of wildflowers on the windowsill while the evening wind set the petals trembling. In that moment she laid her head on the desk and wept for a long, long time, and the next day she handed in her resignation. She came back to Texas on a spring day. The town was exactly as memory had kept it: the barn with its rusted tin roof, the crooked white fence, the old oak standing at the crossroads. With her savings she rented a shop front at the far end of Main Street that had sat empty for years, painted the walls herself, nailed up the shelves, and hauled in pale wooden cabinets rescued from the flea market. On opening day the neighbors brought pots of roses and geraniums they had grown themselves, by way of blessing. Business was slow at first—the people of the town were used to buying bright, already-blooming seedlings in plastic pots from the Walmart in a single trip, and few would stop for a wildflower cut fresh that very morning. Linda was in no hurry. She kept the little shop gleaming behind its spotless windows, and turned the empty strip of earth by the door into a small flower bed of marigolds and cosmos. She loved such days: in the morning rolling up the shutter and letting the sunlight and the wind rush in together; in the evening, after closing, watering every pot with her spray bottle and listening to the raindrop patter of water on the leaves. She had loved running into the hills since childhood. A dozen or so miles north of town stretched a great rolling country of hills and oak woods—in spring the bluebonnets carpeted the slopes, the state flower of Texas, and from a distance the whole land looked like a gentle blue lake; in summer the irises stood in ranks along the creeks; in autumn the sumacs flamed red among golden wild sunflowers. Linda would empty the bed of her pickup, load it with spade, shears, paper sacks, and a few bottles of water, and head for the hills every few days. She knew which flowers bloomed in every hollow, knew where the moss lay thickest on the shady side of each creek, and remembered that beside a certain fallen old tree a clump of unremarkable wild lilies, heady with fragrance, never failed to rise each year. She gathered wildflowers chiefly to breed them. Behind the flower house stood a tiny nursery, its four walls lined with wooden racks crowded with clay pots, enamel basins, and neatly labeled brown-paper sacks. There Linda spent countless quiet afternoons: wearing thin cotton gloves, she would take up a fine-pointed brush and dust the pollen of one flower onto the stigma of another, moving with such care, as though afraid of waking something. Some crosses failed—the seeds went moldy, the seedlings yellowed and died—and she would lightly pencil that line out of her record book. But there were surprises, too: once, from a pink hollyhock and a yellow wild sunflower, she raised a blossom of apricot-orange somewhere between the two, no larger than her thumbnail, and it sent her circling the nursery in delight a good many times. Moments like that convinced her that she had at last found the life she wanted—slow, quiet, a life of soil and the scent of flowers. It was a night close to the full moon. A brief thunderstorm had passed in the daytime, leaving the air washed clean; after dark the clouds parted and the moon rode out, turning the hills silver as though they had been plated with quicksilver. Linda had gone to the far end of the creek valley in search of a blue-flowered sage, and the dark had fallen upon her before she found it; she decided to take a familiar footpath up the hillside and cut across home. As she rounded a stone bluff she stopped short—the moonlight ahead seemed brighter than elsewhere, brighter in a way that was not quite natural, as though someone had hung a tiny blue lantern in the dim shadows of the trees. Holding her breath, she parted the waist-high ferns and walked toward that glimmer. It was seeping from a crack in the rock. Growing in the crevice was a flower she had never seen before, about as high as her knee, leaning gently toward the moon. Moonlight fell upon it and was drawn into it, drop by drop, condensing into a thin halo of faint blue luminescence. Linda crouched down, hardly daring to touch it, and studied it closely in that blue glow. The blossom had five petals, thin as ice formed on an early-summer night, almost transparent; held up to the light, one could see fine veins wandering through them like threads of silver. Its color defied naming—white or blue, it seemed compounded of moonlight, mountain spring, and a little of the night itself, edged with an almost imperceptible green that deepened toward the heart until, at the very center, it pooled into a fathomless indigo. The stamens were tiny, yet their tips wore a faint cold phosphorescence, like a mote of stardust hung in the air, or a tiny lamp of the heart. It gave off no heady perfume, only a very faint, clear coolness, like rain-washed stone, like a mountain stream in the depth of winter; breathe it long enough and one grew almost dizzy. Strangest of all were its stem and leaves. The stem was no thicker than her little finger, pale green, almost transparent; through it one could dimly see a liquid moving slowly, like a slender stream. The leaves were narrow and fleshy, their upper sides a green so deep it verged on black, their undersides sheened with silver down, their edges set with fine teeth. And along the stem and the leaf stalks grew thorns at odd intervals—not blunt and coarse like a rose’s, but fine as needles, black at the tips, glinting with a cold sheen in the moonlight, so that one thought, unbidden, of a serpent’s tongue. When the wind blew, every other plant rustled and murmured; only this flower stood utterly still, while its blue light swelled and ebbed, as though some invisible heart were beating within it. Linda knelt on the cool, damp earth and looked at it for a very long time, until the moonlight slid from her shoulder across her cheek. Dimly, she felt that the flower was looking back at her. She decided to take it home. From her pocket she drew a little folding trowel and began to dig with great care around the outer rim of the roots. The soil was harder than she had imagined, and the deeper she went, the deeper the roots ran, tangled and braided far into the crevice, like many pale arms gripping the mountain. She dared not pull. Gently, with her fingernails, she loosened the earth bit by bit, and it took her nearly an hour before she lifted the flower free, whole, together with a fist-sized ball of root and soil. In the moonlight she saw that even the clod gave off a faint blue glow, and the root-hairs were fine and translucent, like silver threads steeped in water. Linda soaked her neckerchief in the creek, wrapped the root ball with care, and carried it down the mountain in her arms as tenderly as a treasure beyond price. All the way down the flower kept its face tilted toward the moon, and the blue halo followed her, dyeing her shadow a soft pale green. It was well past midnight when she reached the flower house. Linda hunted out her favorite handmade clay pot—a ring of crooked wildflower patterns fired around its belly—set broken shards in the bottom, mixed leaf mold with river sand and a little moss, and planted the flower upright in the middle, watering it with rainwater she had kept for two days. She placed the pot on the windowsill at the very center of the nursery, a window facing the eastern sky where, by night, she could watch the moon climb. For days afterward she poured nearly all her mind upon this one plant. By day the flower was unremarkable—its five petals folded into a small, greyish-green bud tucked among the dark leaves, so that unless one looked closely one took it for an inconspicuous weed. But every night, as soon as the moonlight reached it, the petals unfurled inch by inch and the veil of blue light kindled once more, as though the day were only its deep sleep and the night its true hour. Linda noticed that when clouds veiled the moon its light dimmed; when the moon rode full and high, the blue glow grew bright enough to light half the nursery. It seemed to dislike the direct sun and warm, stuffy places, so she changed the window screen for a thin translucent gauze and set a bowl of clear water beside the pot, letting the night’s rising vapor keep it moist. Every evening she sat before it for a while, noting how far the petals had opened, how bright the blue light was, whether new needle-sharp thorns had risen among the fresh shoots. In her record book she gave it a name: Moonlit Blue. The days slipped past, and the flower grew a little taller than when she had first brought it home; two more thorns appeared along its stem, and its blue light steadied day by day. One evening Linda noticed fine white root-hairs poking out through the drainage hole in the clay pot, and knew it had grown too fast—time to move it to a larger pot. Carefully she eased the plant out of the old pot, cradling the swollen ball of roots, and was just setting it into the new one when a sharp sting shot through her fingertip. She gave a little cry and looked down: a thorn that had grown in without her noticing had caught the pad of her left index finger—fine, long, black at the tip. As she let go it drew lightly across her skin, and at once a round, glistening bead of blood welled up. The bead of blood trembled on her fingertip, then fell—straight onto the half-folded petal. Linda froze. She watched the point of crimson spread outward with visible speed, as though countless invisible veins were opening within the flower, carrying the color into every fiber of its being. The blue light drained from the heart of the bloom and was replaced by a red growing ever deeper—first like sunset, then like embers dying in a stove, until at last the whole flower turned a somber, almost blackened red. The dark halo seeped out between the petals and stained the nursery an ambiguous crimson; even the window gauze glowed with a bloody flush. The flower trembled faintly in that red light, and then—slowly, as a person lifts his head to look at another—it seemed to lean a little toward her. Linda shuddered, unable to say whether she was frightened or merely startled; all she knew was that the flower’s red light pulsed and dimmed in a rhythm that gradually matched her own pounding heart. From the wound a strange heat crept, burning up along her veins from fingertip to somewhere behind her eyes; her sight swam, and her throat went tight and dry. She opened her mouth to call for her mother, but her voice came out as little more than a rasp. She steadied the pot with all her remaining strength, staggered into the shop, and clung to the counter as a chill and a fever chased each other through her body, her legs as weak as if she stood on cotton. She never knew how she reached the bed. The last thing her fading mind registered was a sliver of dark red light leaking through the crack of the nursery door—like an eye that refused to close. That night, Linda’s fever began. Her mother lived on the west side of town, no more than two streets from the flower house. She made a habit of bringing her daughter food every few days, and that evening she had simmered a pot of chicken soup and carried it over in a thermos. She knocked a few times; no one answered, so she let herself in with the spare key. No light was on in the shop; only a dim red glow seeped from the inner room, faint and unidentifiable. Her mother called Linda’s name twice. Still no answer. She pushed open the bedroom door—and started in alarm. Linda lay curled beneath the quilt, cheeks burning scarlet, lips cracked, strands of hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, her whole body as hot as an iron fresh from the fire. “Linda! Linda, what’s the matter? Wake up—your forehead is burning like this!” Her mother rushed to the bedside in two or three strides, slid her hand beneath the quilt to feel her daughter’s forehead, and snatched it back the instant her fingers touched it. “Heavens, so hot! At this rate you’ll burn yourself into a sickness!” Linda opened her eyes in a daze, her pupils wandering, taking a long moment to find their focus. Her lips moved; her voice was terribly hoarse. “Mama… I’m not cold, I’m burning… that flower—it seems… it seems to have come alive…” “What flower? You’re raving with fever, talking nonsense!” Her mother stamped her foot in agitation, hurried to wring out a wet towel, and laid it across Linda’s forehead. “Don’t talk now. Mama will go find you some medicine. You’ve never known how to take care of yourself, not since you were small—living here all alone, running a fever with no one to look after you—” “No, Mama,” Linda said, gripping her mother’s wrist with astonishing strength, two coals of dark red burning in her eyes. “That flower really… really changed color. I saw it turn red—redder than blood… and it’s still glowing…” Her mother’s skin crept under that stare, but she dared not argue with her in such a state, and only humored her: “All right, all right—turned red, glowing, whatever you say. Lie still now; Mama will brew you something.” She tucked Linda’s hand back beneath the quilt, smoothed the covers, and went out—yet her feet, almost of their own accord, carried her toward that inner room glowing with red light. She pushed open the nursery door and at once saw the plant on the windowsill. In the dim room its halo of dark red light rose and fell softly; the whole blossom was like a clump of burning embers, so red it seemed about to drip. Her mother had seen many flowers in her life—as a young woman she had gathered herbs in the mountains—but never such a flower as this, never one that gave off light of its own. Her heart lurched. She stepped back two paces until her spine met the cold doorframe, and the old tales she had heard around town, the ones she had long dismissed as jokes, came flooding back all at once. She steadied herself, stepped forward, and reached out to carry the pot away. Her fingertips had barely touched the clay when Linda’s voice came from the bed, cracking with tears: “Mama—don’t touch it! Please, don’t touch it!” Her mother stood frozen. She turned and saw that her daughter had somehow pushed herself up on the edge of the bed and was standing barefoot on the floor, swaying, her face ashen, her eyes fixed desperately on the pot in her mother’s hands. Something in the mother’s heart softened, and something else turned sharp and sour. She set the pot down, hurried over, and pressed her daughter back onto the bed. “All right, all right—I won’t touch it; Mama won’t touch it. Lie down. Mama isn’t going anywhere. I’ll stay right here and watch over you.” For those three days her mother scarcely closed her eyes. She kept vigil by the bedside, bathing Linda’s forehead, palms, and soles again and again with cool water, grinding fever medicine into warm water and feeding it to her spoon by spoon. By day she went home to simmer soup and porridge; by night she wrapped herself in an old blanket and dozed in the rattan chair beside her daughter’s bed. Linda’s fever rose and fell, now high, now low; when it burned fiercest she raved without pause—one moment saying someone in the valley was calling her name, the next that the flower was watching her and a blood-red color was climbing up her arms. Her mother held her burning hand, tears falling in steady drops, murmuring over and over: “You can’t be all right, can you… Mama has only you… if anything happens to you, what would I do…” The next evening Linda’s fever eased somewhat and her mind cleared a little. Her mother sat by the bed with a bowl of hot porridge, blowing gently on each spoonful to cool it before raising it to her daughter’s lips. Linda took two mouthfuls, then said softly, without warning: “Mama, I’m sorry. I’ve made you worry again.” Her mother’s eyes reddened at once. She turned her face away, and only after a long while answered in a low, thick voice: “What foolish talk. You’re my only daughter. If I don’t worry about you, who would I worry about?” “It’s just… there’s something I can’t understand.” Linda stared at the ceiling, her voice faint. “I took such good care of it—watered it every day, opened the window at night so it could see the moon… so why did it suddenly turn into that?” “Turn into what?” Her mother set down the bowl, her face turning serious. “Linda, tell Mama the truth—what is that plant, really? I’ve lived more than half my life and never seen a wildflower that glows red. Tell me honestly, where did you get it?” “From the mountains,” Linda said. “In a crack in that stone bluff to the north. On the night of the full moon it was glowing all by itself—blue, bright as a lamp. I was curious, so I dug it up and brought it home.” Her mother was silent for a long while before she sighed. “When you were small—your grandmother was still with us then—she used to tell me there’s a flower in these mountains that blooms only on moonlit nights, that lives by drinking moonlight, and that once it tastes blood it chooses its master. I always thought your grandmother’s mind had gone soft and she was talking nonsense… I never imagined you would actually come upon it.” “Chooses its master?” Linda faltered, and without thinking looked down at her left index finger, where the thorn had pricked her; a scab had formed, yet a thread of warmth, faint but undeniable, still lingered there. “Chooses what master?” “Mama doesn’t know, either.” Her mother shook her head, reached out to feel her daughter’s forehead and then her own; satisfied that the fever had indeed abated, her tone softened. “But you listen to Mama’s advice: once you’re well, throw that flower away. Something that came down from the mountains, something you can’t explain or understand—better not to keep it in the house. If you love flowers, Mama will take you to the flower market and buy you as many as you want.” “I won’t throw it away.” The words were out before Linda had even thought them, and she surprised herself a little. Seeing her mother’s eyes go wide, she hurried to soften her tone. “Mama, it’s not that I won’t listen to you… but think about it—I’ve kept this flower for so many days, and it’s never hurt me. If it truly meant me harm, it would have done it long ago. Why would it wait until I was changing its pot to give me one little prick? Maybe it was just… just startled by me.” “Startled by you?” Her mother was torn between exasperation and laughter. “It’s a flower. What could scare a flower?” “Anyway, I just feel like it knows me now.” As she spoke the corners of Linda’s mouth curved up of their own accord, and her eyes shone with a strange brightness. “Do you remember the grey cat I had when I was little? When I first found it, it was always scratching me with its claws—but once we were familiar, it slept beside my pillow every night. This flower… is probably the same.” Her mother was left speechless by such crooked logic. She studied her daughter for a long while, then let out one long sigh and picked up the bowl of porridge again. “You’ve always been stubborn—once you set your heart on something, nine yoke of oxen couldn’t drag you back. Fine, Mama can’t rule you. But you must promise me this: from now on, when you go into the mountains, no more creeping into hidden corners; if you come upon flowers or grasses you don’t recognize, no more digging them up on a whim; and if you run a fever at night again, the very first thing you do is call Mama. Do you hear?” “I hear you, Mama.” Linda answered meekly, took the bowl, and drank slowly, head bowed. The porridge was millet, cooked thick and soft, sweetened with red dates and rock sugar; it flowed from her throat down into her stomach like pure warmth. Suddenly her nose stung. She had been away for three years, and yet her mother’s porridge tasted exactly as it had in childhood—one spoonful seemed to melt away all the cold and weariness she had carried out of the city. At dawn on the third day Linda’s fever broke completely. She pushed herself out of bed on legs that were still weak, took a hot bath, dressed in clean clothes, and only then pushed open the nursery door. The plant was still on the windowsill, standing quietly; its dark red glow had softened a great deal, a thin halo of rosy light lingering along the edges of the petals. Morning light filtered through the gauze and fell upon it; the red had shed the bewitching wildness of the night and taken on a composed, almost tender cast, like a piece of agate warmed in the palm. Linda crouched down and leaned close. The drop of blood from the night before was gone without a trace, as though the flower’s veins had drunk it up and digested it wholly into its own flesh and blood. She reached out her left hand and, with the pad of her finger, lightly touched the thorn that had pricked her—the tip was still black and gleaming, but this time it did not prick her; it was as docile as a small needle asleep. “Good morning,” she said softly, as one greets a friend of long standing. “Yesterday… thank you for not taking my life.” The flower, of course, did not answer. But Linda could have sworn its red light brightened by a fraction, pulsing once and then again, as though it were winking at her. She stood up and heard her mother calling from the shop, her voice hoarse from a sleepless night yet strong and full of vigor: “Linda—are you up yet? This porridge has gone cold twice already!” She answered, and walked out with a light step. At the door she could not resist one more look back at the plant. In the morning light the red flower stood quietly on the windowsill, like a small, inextinguishable flame. Linda did not know what it was, nor why a single drop of blood had changed its color. She knew only that from this day forward, between her and this glowing wildflower from the mountain, some bond had been forged that she could neither name nor unravel—like the thorn that had pierced her fingertip: it had pricked so lightly, and yet left a mark that could never be erased. And in the very instant she turned away, the flower’s red light—very, very faintly—pulsed once more, in time with her heartbeat.